Tracks

by Robyn Davidson

  Aborigines. Warm, friendly, laughing, excited, tired Pitjantjara Aborigines, returning to Wingelinna and Pipalyatjara after a land rights meeting in Warburton. No fear there, they were comfortable with silence. No need to pretend anything. Billies of tea all round. Some sat by the fire and chatted, others drove on home.

  The last car, a clapped-out ancient Holden, chug-a-chugged in. One young driver, and three old men. They decided to stay for the night. I shared my tea and blankets. Two of the old men were quiet and smiling. I sat by them in silence, letting their strength seep in. One I especially liked. A dwarfish man with dancing hands, straight back, and on his feet, one huge Adidas and one tiny woman’s shoe. He handed me the best bit of his part-cooked rabbit, dripping grease and blood, fur singed and stinking. I ate it gratefully. I remembered that I had not eaten properly for the past few days.

  The one I didn’t like so well was the voluble one who could speak a little English and knew all about camels and probably everything else in the world as well. He was loud, egotistical, not composed like the others.

  Early in the morning, I boiled the billy and started to pack up. I talked to my companions a little. They decided that one of them should accompany me to Pipalyatjara, two days’ walk away, to look after me. I was sure it was going to be the talkative one, the one who spoke English, and my heart sank.

  But as I was about to walk off with the camels, who should join me but — the little man. ‘Mr Eddie,’ he said, and pointed to himself. I pointed to myself and said ‘Robyn’, which I suppose he thought meant ‘rabbit’, since that is the Pitjantjara word for it. It seemed appropriate enough. And then we began to laugh.

  Part Three

  Little Bit Long Way

  9

  FOR THE NEXT TWO DAYS Eddie and I walked together, we played charades trying to communicate and fell into fits of hysteria at each others antics. We stalked rabbits and missed, picked bush foods and generally had a good time. He was sheer pleasure to be with, exuding all those qualities typical of old Aboriginal people — strength, warmth, self-possession, wit, and a kind of rootedness, a substantiality that immediately commanded respect. And I wondered as we walked along, how the word ‘primitive’ with all its subtle and nasty connotations ever got to be associated with people like this. If, as someone has said, ‘to be truly civilized, is to embrace disease,’ then Eddie and his kind were not civilized. Because that was what was so outstanding in him: he was healthy, integrated, whole. That quality radiated from him and you would have to be a complete dolt to miss it.

  By now the country had changed dramatically. I was well away from the dreaded pits and hollows of sandhill country. Vast plains covered in yellow grasses like wheat fields swept up to the foot of chocolate-brown rocky mountains and ranges. These were covered at the base by pale green and yellow spinifex and bushes, which slowly gave way to the bare stony outcroppings at the top. Small washaways contained most of the trees, and every now and then just one single bare red sandhill stuck up in the middle of the yellow. Bright green peeked out of the valleys and chasms, and all of it capped with that infinite dome of cobalt blue. The sense of space, clean bright limitless space was with me again.

  However, after all that had happened to me, all that madness and strain, I desperately needed to talk in depth with someone. Because, while my panic and fear had now been supplanted by a frenetic happiness, I was still shaken to the core. Still teetering. I had to recover my ordinary self and make sense of the experience somehow. I was a third of the way through my trip, and Glendle, the community adviser at Pipalyatjara, would be the first and perhaps last friend I was likely to meet. I was longing to see him, to speak in English about all that had been going on. But Eddie kept telling me he had ‘gone’. I found out later that he attached the word ‘gone’ to the ends of many sentences; it roughly implied direction so I need not have worried. But the thought of Glendle being away was too much to bear.

  When Eddie walked a little behind I could feel him looking askance at me — feel his puzzled eyes on the back of my head.

  ‘What’s wrong with this woman? Why doesn’t she just relax? She keeps repeating, “Is Glendle there, Eddie, is he there now?”’

  ‘Glendle gooooooone,’ he said, waving his little hand in the air. Whenever he said that he raised his eyebrows and widened his eyes in a comical look of surprised seriousness, but I found it hard to smile. I turned and walked on, trying to control the trembling chin and the tears that threatened to bounce out of my eyeballs at any second and stream down my face.

  ‘Please, please, you’ve got to be there, Glendle, I need to talk and get it all straight. I’ve never needed a friend like this before. Please, please be there.’

  We camped that night three miles out of Wingelinna, Eddie’s home settlement. He instructed me to stay in camp while he went in to get his possessions. He came back with a rusty tin, containing a bottle of liniment, a bottle of aspirin and some desert herb. Oh, and a red jumper.

  We headed on to Pipalyatjara the next morning, with me feeling anxious and Eddie singing. I wasn’t following maps, so I had no idea how close the settlement would be. Suddenly I noticed a tin shed on my right. I must have been staring dead ahead to have missed it. On its walls were children’s drawings and paintings.

  ‘Could that possibly be a school? Pipalyatjara doesn’t have a school, does it? Glendle’s the only white person here, isn’t he?’ I stopped and blinked. I was completely disoriented. I couldn’t remember whether drawings on the walls meant a school or not. I didn’t know if I was crazy enough to be making absurd assumptions. And yet it looked like a bush school. Yes, of course, it had to be, what else. A shadow came to the door, hesitated and came strolling out rolling a cigarette. He was a rather hippieish young man, and he said in a quiet and cultivated voice, ‘Hello there, we’ve been expecting you. How’s it been going?’

  I gulped. I wanted to throw my arms about him, prostrate myself before him, and dance a jig. He spoke English. But I still didn’t know how mad I was. And if I was crazy I didn’t want him to realize it. So I just stared dumbly, with a great lop-sided grin splitting my face open and garbled, ‘Glendle?’

  ‘Just turn the corner and you’ll see some caravans, he’s in one of those.’ He smiled and offered me a smoke. I was too embarrassed for him to see my shaking hands, and too afraid that I might give myself away by saying or doing something incomprehensible, so I just shook my head and walked on, wondering if he had picked anything up.

  And then it struck me that people don’t really mind if you’re crazy out there. In fact, they half expect it and are usually slightly crazy themselves. Besides, there aren’t enough people to go around for anyone to worry about whether they are dealing with a fruit-cake or not.

  I knew Glendle’s caravan immediately. Who else would have a wind-chime stuck to a tree in his front yard? The only tree for miles and a dead one at that. Not that there was a yard of course, just that invisible demarcation that all dwellings radiate. He came out and we hugged and then hugged some more and then we hugged again and I couldn’t speak so I got busy making the camels comfortable, and then we three went inside for the inevitable Australian ritual of tea-drinking. I started gibbering then, and I didn’t stop raving blessed English for a minute. Or laughing.

  That high lasted four days. Glendle was a most perfect, perceptive and loving host. He even gave up his crisp-sheeted bed, while he and Eddie slept outside. He swore he preferred sleeping outside and it was only laziness that prevented him from doing so more often, which was probably true. So I accepted gratefully. Not that I hadn’t fallen in love with my swag by then, but experiencing the luxury of a bed again was kind of interesting. Diggity was overjoyed.

  That night Glendle cooked tea. Eddie had set up camp outside and old men and women were constantly coming up to see him and talk to Glendle and me. I was once again struck by these old people. They were softly spoken, chuckled constantly and seemed completely self-assured. And I wished I understood mo
re Pitjantjara. While I could get the gist of most conversations, I couldn’t pick up on abstracts. But I could tell that there were many camel yarns being swapped there that night.

  Throughout the days that followed it seemed that there were always people coming up to the caravan to say hello, borrow cups and billy, share a mug of tea, air and resolve grievances, or discuss policies. It was nice, but I wondered how Glendle ever got anything done. He was burdened with endless paper-work dished out by bureaucrats, and he hated it. A community advisers job may be enviable in some ways, but is essentially thankless. His major role is to formalize the distribution of money to individuals, which task is usually done through the medium of a store, where the people cash their cheques and buy goods at inflated prices. The profits are used to buy those things for the community that the Aboriginal council thinks should be purchased. Trucks for example, or bore parts. He coordinates all the systems such as health and education services and acts as a liaison officer between bureaucracies and the people. This, of course, makes him the primary flak-catcher, because Aborigines have little concept of budgets, how and why the money gets there, and the bureaucrats know nothing about the Aboriginal way of life.

  The job has other soul-destroying aspects, as I learnt from Glendle. No white person can fully enter Aboriginal reality and the more you learn, the more you’re aware of that vast gap of knowledge and understanding. It takes a long time to perceive the various complications and rules attached to such a position, and by that time you are usually burnt out. Some advisers out there became initiated by the old men. This, they thought, would bring them much closer to the people and an understanding of them. It certainly did, but it also set up other problems. In becoming initiated, they found they had conflicting duties and responsibilities to various groups, thus making it difficult to be fair to all.

  The job is made more difficult by the fact that the adviser is more aware than the Aborigines of the possible consequences of their decisions, and wants to protect them. Not becoming a paternal-style protectionist means seeing catastrophic mistakes being made, and not being able to do a thing about it except advise, because you know that the only way the people can learn to deal with the white world is to make such mistakes. There will not always be kind-hearted whitefellas around to save the situation and be a buffer zone. At some point the people must become autonomous. A fine line.

  And Glendle was tired — boned out. Trying to get things started, against the pressure of governments and with the lack of money, support and facilities, depressed and frustrated him at times. While he was besotted with the country and its people, and while he enjoyed a mutually respectful relationship with them, the work took its toll, as it does on almost everyone involved for any length of time with Aboriginal rights, whether it be out on some settlement or in a legal office in town. There is always just too much to fight. The positive steps are so minuscule, so piffling in the face of the enormity of what is being done to them.

  Pipalyatjara, unlike many other settlements, was lucky in that it did not have a multi-tribal population. It did not have the phenomenon of regularly occurring inter-tribal fights between individuals and groups. Traditionally throughout Australia each tribe had perhaps several tribal neighbours. Some of these were important economic and ritual partners, whilst others were regarded as antagonists because of either a history of conflicts or dissimilar customs and beliefs. Nevertheless, their traditional relationships were not taken into account at all when government field officers established the first outposts and settlements. Here in Pipalyatjara, because of the homogeneity, conflict between individuals was strictly controlled by traditional laws and methods for its resolution. The settlement was originally set up years ago as an outstation — an alternative to Wingelinna which had been a mining centre. It was hoped that other outstations would spring up, like satellites, once Pipalyatjara had been established.

  The real importance of this approach to Aboriginal settlement is that it allows groups to get away from the institutionalizing pressure of those areas of maximum Western impact — the mission and government settlements. This movement contains an element of withdrawal; the people go of their own volition back to their traditional lifestyle and traditional lands, where they are able to enact traditional ceremonies, teach their children traditional skills and knowledge, but at the same time take what they see as important from Western culture, if they so desire. It is a lifestyle which maximizes identity and pride, and minimizes the problems of cultural conflict. The typical outstation ranges from a camp with no Western artefacts at all, not even a gun, to a camp supplemented with services chosen by the occupants. These may include airstrip, water bore, wireless, and caravans containing teaching and medical facilities with perhaps one to several whites teaching in these. This outstation movement seems to be gaining momentum throughout tribal Australia where it is politically possible.

  Whilst in Pipalyatjara, I learnt that the Pitjantjara people were trying to have their land turned from leasehold to freehold. The attitude of the elders at first had been to dismiss the whole question. As far as they were concerned they didn’t own the land, the land owned them. Their belief was that the earth was traversed in the dream-time by ancestral beings who had supernatural energy and power. These beings were biologically different from contemporary man, some being a synthesis of man and animal, plant, or forces such as fire or water.

  The travels of these dream time heroes formed the topography of the land, and their energies remained on earth embodied in the tracks they followed, or in special sites or landmarks where important events had taken place. Contemporary man receives part of these energies through a complex association with and duty towards these places. These are what anthropologists call totems — the identification of individuals with particular species of animals and plants and other natural phenomena. Thus particular trees, rocks and other natural objects are imbued with enormous religious significance for the people who own a particular area of country and have the knowledge of ceremonies and stories for that country.

  There is no confusion in the minds of Aboriginal people as to who are the traditional caretakers of country. Land ‘ownership’ and responsibility is handed down through both the patriline and matriline. People also have some claim to the land on which they were born or conceived, and there are other more complex relationships between clans whereby the responsibility for land is shared.

  The connection between the dream time, the country, and the traditional caretakers of country is manifested in the complex ceremonies that are performed by clan members. Some are increase ceremonies, ensuring the continued and plentiful existence of plants and animals and maintaining the ecological welfare of the landscape (indeed of the world); some are specifically for the initiation of young boys (making of men); and some are to promote the health and well-being of the community and so on. This detailed body of knowledge, law and wisdom handed down to the people from the dream-time is thus maintained and kept potent, and passed on through generations by enacting of ritual. Every tribal person has a knowledge of the ceremonies for his/her country and an obligation to respect the sacred sites that belong to them (or rather, to which they belong).

  Ceremonies are the visible link between Aboriginal people and their land. Once dispossessed of this land, ceremonial life deteriorates, people lose their strength, meaning and identity.

  In the Pitjantjara case, the old men and women set the issue of freehold and leasehold aside as a triviality and it is doubtful whether the government bureaucrats had the slightest idea why. To those old people, the concept of owning land was far more impossible than owning a star or an allotment of air would be to us.

  Apart from the fact that I am no authority on the subject, trying to describe Aboriginal cosmology briefly is like trying to explain quantum mechanics in five seconds. Besides, no amount of anthropological detail can begin to convey Aboriginal feeling for their land. It is everything — their law, their ethics, their reason for existence. Wi
thout that relationship they become ghosts. Half people. They are not separate from the land. When they lose it, they lose themselves. This is why the land rights movement has become so essential. Because, by denying them their land, we are committing cultural and, in this case, racial genocide.

  Dinner with Glendle that night was the usual, pancakes made with wholemeal, bug-infested flour, eggs and milk — a terrible leaden affair that bloated the belly after two bites. Sometimes he’d put the horrible mess into a baking dish and stick it in the oven and call it soufflé. Soufflé à la inner tube.

  The wholemeal flour venture at Pipalyatjara had been one of Glendle’s failures. Since the intervention of the whites, white flour, tea and sugar have become staples for many Aboriginal people, and although Glendle didn’t worship the magical properties of wholemeal brown rice sandwiches with Dr Suzuki soya butter, given the fact that people were dropping like flies from diabetes, malnutrition and heart disease he thought he would inject at least some particle of nutritional sense into the diet. But they hated it. So he mixed wholemeal flour with white flour, to be sold at their store. They still hated it. Eventually, some of the old people came up to Glendle and told him to keep his porridge, they wanted their old-style, fluffy dampers back again. Defeat. Well, not quite. One old lady remained addicted to it.

  We spent many of those nights having long heart-to-hearts. I could feel myself knitting together again, putting things into perspective, clearing my confusion. And I talked about Richard. I had still not rid myself of the burden of him and poor Glendle copped the lot. At the end of one particularly long and vitriolic rave, he just looked at me for a while and said, ‘Yes, but you’re missing one important fact. Rick is a good friend to you — has done a lot for you. And anyway, it was you who invited him along, not the other way around. Can’t have your cake and eat it too you know.’